


3 Ways to Use a Flammagel

by musamihi



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Competence Kink, Dubious Science, First Kiss, M/M, Mission Fic, Sleeping Under The Stars, Wilderness Survival, blowing stuff up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 03:25:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7342738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musamihi/pseuds/musamihi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a mission to raid or destroy a First Order munitions depot, Poe and Finn find themselves stranded in the jungles of Ksift.  They see no reason why the fact that they only have camping gear (all right, and a couple blaster rifles) should keep them from getting the job done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	3 Ways to Use a Flammagel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blue_eyed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_eyed/gifts).



Under better circumstances, the sudden, explosive return of sound was the best part of tearing into an atmosphere - better than the endless variety of color and geography that stretched out below you on every new world, better than the prospect of a real meal and flat bed, it came with the delightfully unpredictable mix of gravity, pressure, _air_ that made flying a completely different game than it had been seconds earlier. After the sleek, silent, perfect medium that was empty space, the rushing and deafening chaos of a terrestrial landing could be the best kind of kick in the pants.

This was ... not that.

For one thing, it wasn't just the atmosphere that was fighting back. The ship itself was bucking, listing, trying its hardest to pitch up - at least one engine offline, structural damage most likely somewhere aft - as Poe forced it level, over and over and over again, concentrating every bit of his own strength and the ship's momentum into steadying their descent. It was a jarring, rattling, restraint-testing ride. The shrieking chorus of alarms was not, frankly, a hell of a lot of help. There were few things he was more aware of than their fast-slipping altitude, the terrain shooting by to either side of them as he threaded along the sky above a wide but narrowing river; he'd been hoping for a water landing, because the land below them seemed to be pretty much all trees, and if he could keep from smashing into anything _else_ on the way down, that would be - well, not ideal, but pretty damned nice. It was a no-go, though. The river was shrinking shockingly quickly into a thin, white-water strip. Soon it would hardly be wide enough to fly above at all without clipping the overhanging trees, and that would mean losing control, which would mean goodbye to their already beyond-precarious stability. For a moment - two - he considered trying to yaw around, follow the river as it widened, but odds were they'd just spin out as he tried to make the turn. For now, he had the reins. He had to keep them. 

"All right," he muttered, probably inaudible under all the ship's many dire warnings. Time to pick a lesser evil. Where did the forest look softest? "Brace up!" he barked, louder.

Finn - or rather, his reflection in the viewport - didn't look as though he really needed to be told.

There was - not a clearing, but a dip in the canopy off their port side. Poe let the ship sheer off in its preferred direction for a few degrees, then battled with it again to straighten, slow - threw open every flap and bay just hoping for a little drag - heard the first scratch of branches on the hull - and then everything was a wild crunching jumble of sun, shade, leaves, and impact. Somewhere in the very back of his mind, the only sliver of it not thoroughly occupied with their trajectory, every last blow from a tree trunk registered as a relief. It meant a loss of speed. That he'd felt it meant he was still breathing. 

And then ... they stopped. Miraculously upright, if severely slanted, suddenly they were no longer moving, no longer plowing through treetops, and Poe went into damage control mode. His hand slammed down on the panel covering the emergency life support sensors - just about everything was in the red, but none of the all-important indicators meaning they needed to eject or evacuate immediately were glaring at him. External environmental readings were dead flat, but that probably just meant he'd left the wing-mounted instrumentation in a tree somewhere, because it was unlikely that Ksift had turned into an airless rock in the days it had taken them to make the jump from the Prindaar system.

Okay. Good. Step one: they weren't about to die in an explosion or a vacuum. _Check._

Step two: time to make sure Finn wasn't about to die of anything else. 

Finn put that fear to rest: he rolled his neck gingerly from side to side, half a grimace on his face, and stretched his arms slowly out to either side, flexing all the way to his fingertips and looking for all the world as though he were rousing himself from a nap. "Oh," he said, turning an aggressively untroubled look on Poe, eyebrows raised. "Have we landed?"

Poe laughed, a sharp, quick rush of breath (and no small side helping of relief), already jerking at his restraint harness - and grinning with the brilliant, keyed-up energy that only came after a brutal close shave. "Hilarious."

"It's just, that was so much smoother than the last time -"

"What can I say, you always catch me at my best -"

"Honest question," Finn plowed on, shoving himself out of his chair with a wince that Poe filed away for later, since it didn't seem to be limiting his mobility. "You know, I know you've flown everything, but - seriously, have you ever landed _anything_?"

"I don't know, man. That sounds really boring." Poe ripped an emergency pack off the bulkhead and tossed it to him; Finn snatched it out of the air. "You good?"

"I'm good. All right?"

"Like new." No serious pain, anyway, no vision problems, no major joints locking up. A pull in his shoulder that didn't feel great, but would work itself out. He was on his feet and breathing, and that would do him just fine. Throwing a second emergency pack over the shoulder that wasn't currently protesting, he lunged between the seats to engage the distress beacon.

Finn nodded down at that flashing green indicator light. "Looking for some company?"

"They're going to find this boat anyway," Poe said, digging into his pack for one of the flat, pentagonal tins tucked into the webbing. "Might as well send them an invite. The more guys they send out here, the less we have to juggle _there_. I'll wipe the nav and get the gear." He held the tin out in the palm of his hand. "You know how to rig a Tarhassian Holiday?"

Finn took the tin, flipped it between his fingers, and pried open the lid to reveal the blue and faintly luminescent paste inside. "If you mean, do I know how to use a flammagel to set a delayed chemical fuse to the deuterium tanks -"

"They were really _not_ big on names, huh -"

"Then yes. _And_ ," Finn said, resealing the tin and jabbing it gently in Poe's direction with an air of smug authority, "it's called a Ku'bakai Sunrise."

"Oh, is that right."

"Absolutely."

Poe set his hands on Finn's shoulders, pursed his lips, and shook his head. "It's like we're from different galaxies."

Finn turned into the cramped corridor that led to the maintenance access well, pausing at the top of the ladder to call back: "You're just wrong!"

Tarhassian Holiday, Ku'bakai Sunrise - whatever it was called, it was a gamble, and not the kind you could pull back at the last minute. Blowing the ship meant no ride home, not without borrowing someone else's. But their landing hadn't exactly been subtle, and it hadn't left them with much of a shot at making repairs, not here. To his credit, it could have been a lot worse; the extremely close point of entry from hyperspace, way too far into the planet's gravity well and right smack in the middle of all the unpredictable pieces of orbital detritus that always entailed, had required some of the tightest flying he'd ever had to do in what was essentially a stripped-down cargo shuttle. That they'd taken an awkward hit from a foreign object was no real surprise. The mission objective had been, ideally, to locate and raid one of the First Order's scattered munitions depots deep in the wilderness of one of Ksift's remote jungles, a minor cache that was nonetheless better off _not_ falling into the hands of this sector's rapidly expanding criminal shadow government. (Weren't power vacuums just a pain in the ass?) But if a raid was out of the question, well - locate and destroy would do just as nicely. That, he could do without a cargo shuttle. If the distress beacon drew some people off from the First Order's base, that was a nice bonus. If the ensuing explosion, which would erase any trace of evidence any First Order slicers might be able to lift of where the shuttle had come from, also happened to get their attention even more firmly in hand - great. Poe could find a way off-world. He always did. He'd get himself and Finn back to where they needed to be. There wasn't a doubt in his mind.

He smiled as he landed on the slick, leaf-littered ground below the awkwardly angled hatch, as the thick, sweet, humid smell of rotting vegetation unfurled around him. The air was oppressive, soft, still. No, there wasn't a doubt in his mind - nor in Finn's, apparently. He'd taken that flammagel and walked it right back into the ship without so much as a blink. He hadn't even asked.

But getting home was step ten or eleven. Poe hefted one of the blaster rifles he'd brought out with him over his shoulder; the other he held, letting it rest down by his thigh. They had a lot of ground to cover before they even thought about leaving this behind - a two-day hike or so, if the intel checked out - and all they had to do it with were their weapons and a couple survival kits.

Easy. No problem.

A minute or two later, Finn dropped down beside him, his own pack strapped onto his back. Poe handed him his gun. The ship was all set, ready to blow - there was no doubt in his mind. He didn't ask.

\- - -

They stopped, at the end of the first day, on a ridge that afforded a decent vantage over the downward slope they'd have to tackle in the morning. It had the added benefit of catching a little weak breeze, which the dense and unbroken canopy had utterly precluded up until now - and of showing half a horizon's worth of dark sky. This part of the planet was sparsely inhabited, almost desolate; the very faint glow under the heaping, silently flashing clouds to the east might have been light reflected from one of the few tropical cities hundreds of klicks away - or it might have been Poe's imagination. Whatever it was, it was interfering with his stargazing. But then, planetside, pretty much everything did.

"Say what you want about Jakku," he said, sprawled out on top of his thermal sleeping liner (currently useful only for being waterproof), gazing through the sensor-baffling netting they'd slung between the tree branches above. "At least in a place like that, you can see a little something in the sky. The humidity here - you might as well be underwater."

"Yeah," Finn drawled, resting back against the massive tree trunk beside which they'd set up camp, glancing up with a grimace from where he'd been kneading at his calf. "Yeah, I _will_ say what I want about Jakku." He'd slowed down a little, Poe had noticed, since they'd halted for the night - he'd lulled slightly below the eager, ever-forward pace that seemed to be his usual mode. That was good, of course, that was expected, when you settled in, when you went down to recharge for the jam-packed day ahead. But it wasn't a side of him he'd often seen before. Even during his recovery, when physically he'd had to contend with the havoc a lightsaber could wreak on one's torso, Finn's state of mind had always seemed to be geared toward what was next, swimming in impatience, almost frenetic. Poe could sympathize; he spent his fair share of time feeling like he was about to burst out of his skin with the need to _move_. And maybe this was just an effect of taking a landing a little too hard - maybe Finn was just masking some little pain, one of the myriad minor complaints they all ignored (to varying degrees of stupidity) when there was an objective that couldn't wait for comfort.

Maybe, though, it was a response to something that still lay beyond the horizon. Sure, Finn had been practically jumping to get back to _Starkiller_ when everything had been on the line, when he'd had a friend to rescue and a galaxy to save - he'd shown no reluctance whatsoever to plunge himself back in his old world, to risk running up against what he'd left behind. But it couldn't have been easy. It had to have weighed on him. It had to do, still. "Fine," Poe laughed, gliding right over his concerns for the moment - brooding didn't want indulgence. "But I'm telling you, out in that desert? I could make out Cyax. Naked eye."

"I'm pretty sure you just had a concussion, my friend."

"Sure, that too." He smiled. "Still. Fantastic. Almost like flying."

"But about a thousand times colder," Finn insisted, looking up at him with that incredulity of his, the disbelief Poe liked to think of as _fond_.

"Hah. Spoken like an infantryman."

One side of Finn's mouth quirked up; Poe could see it, from where he was twisting his neck to look back at him, having exhausted Ksift's meager astronomical offerings. "Maybe. Getting jammed in with about fifty other guys had better be good for _something_. It did stay warm."

"No kidding. Warm, ripe - I'll take my one-man freezer, any day. I love that - nothing like seeing it up close, you know?" In a manner of speaking, of course; not that, in the grand scheme of things, getting a couple hundred kilometers off any given ground put you all that much nearer to your average celestial body. "Nothing between you and whatever it is you want to see, nothing between you and absolute zero but a little transparisteel and some self-preservation -"

"You have self-preservation?"

"- _And_ some good luck. You hit the wrong switch, you take the wrong hit, you look the wrong way, and - there it goes. There's nothing like that. Every second of it's like - I don't know. Getting something right in your veins. And the stars," he added, rolling pointedly onto his stomach (no stars here, none worth so much as glancing up at), propping himself up on his elbows and reaching for the half a ration bar that lay between them, "the stars are pretty sweet, too."

Finn tipped his head back, that half a smile still hanging on his face as he seemed to stare up into the dark, tree-covered half of their little campsite. Poe had the feeling he wasn't looking at something, so much as avoiding something else - and he was silent for quite a while, longer than Poe really liked. "I don't think," Finn said, at last, "that I'm like that." He said that, sometimes, _I don't think_ , as though he really and truly didn't know, and every single time, it made Poe want to break something - "I liked the armor. I did. Well - not _liked_ , maybe. That's like saying I like having skin. But it's part of you, it does something. Makes you feel ... solid. Bigger than you. And I don't mean like it adds a couple inches or gives you a buffer, I mean - you're _part_ of something bigger, bigger than you. You're inside something. Safe. Safety in numbers, maybe. You belong to something. You know?"

Poe mustered up all of his strength, scraping together every last scrap of his affection and good will, to say: "Sure." He was sure it was something he _didn't_ understand; he was sure it was something he didn't want to understand. Still. "I guess that's how I felt, you know, when I found -"

"What - no." Finn looked down at him, then, his smile loosening. "What, the Resistance? It's not the same," he said, to Poe's immense relief - he was awful at insincerity, and even worse at metaphors. "And that's _good_. But it's not the same." Finn flexed his ankle; dug his fingers once again into the muscle above it. "It's not safe. I _like_ it, though, the - I don't know what it is. I like your stupid, headlong stunts."

Poe grinned. "No, you don't." He hauled himself up to sitting, and reached over to rummage in his pack for a thin, stiff plastic tube, and another tin of flammagel. "You can't kriffing stand them. But I'll keep you safe."

Finn laughed, then. "You're the farthest thing from _safe_."

That took him aback - Poe stopped, his hands still somewhere in the depths of his bag, and did his usual substandard job of composing his face. It must have been even worse than usual, because even in the dark, even in the almost complete lack of starlight, Finn seemed to find a reason to soften his voice, to pull back a bit from his blithe, roughhousing tone. "But so am I," Finn said - kindly, as ever - with a shrug that seemed to open him up. "You know that."

And there was that feeling again - the anger that always came so close to cresting in him, when Finn talked about who, about _what_ he was. It was the same anger that had driven him into the Resistance, or something like it - but more impotent, and without outlet. There were some injustices that could be righted, some things that there was still time to fix. And then - and then there was Finn, who made him feel powerless in the worst way. Poe had given him a name - he'd led him to a new family - he'd watched, with joy and pride and relief, as he found and fulfilled a new purpose. But there was so much he knew he could never possibly touch, so much he could never, ever piece back together for him ... and it made him want to burn fucking forests.

Instead, he dug his knife out of his pocket, carved out a tiny, glimmering sliver of flammagel, and watched its light flash along the blade as he recapped the tin. For basic warmth, you hardly needed any of the stuff, and it didn't have to be ignited - prolonged exposure to the open air activated it after several seconds, and it began to soften and to clarify. He held that plastic tube over it, warming it, triggering a reaction in the stuff inside, which began slowly to give off a sharp, spicy smell. "Will you pull your damn pant leg up," he said, nodding roughly to the leg Finn hadn't stopped fussing with since they'd sat down. "You're making _me_ ache."

Finn obliged, after only a brief hesitation, and Poe tipped that tube out over his shin, before kneading the sticky, clumping stuff into the tense flesh of his leg. He handed his knife off to Finn; it flickered between them, its glow washing their faces in a soft gray. Poe could feel Finn's muscles slowly, slowly slackening under his hand; out of the corner of his eye, he could see his face settling into something slightly more relaxed, his eyelids dropping, his chest rising and falling in a pronounced but gentle rhythm. Some of his own unhappiness seemed to bleed out through his skin, as the analgesic started a not unpleasant tingling numbness in his palms. Before long, he'd forgotten most of everything beyond their patch of light. It helped. Touch so often did - he wasn't a meditator, was constitutionally pretty much incapable of it, but in its own way, physical contact was almost contemplative, for him. It drowned out other things, like white noise.

After what felt like a long time, he straightened, reached in to take his knife back -

And Finn leaned up off the tree, reaching down with his free hand to grab Poe's wrist, thrusting his chin out to kiss him. All of it was clumsy, rushed, a little desperate - Poe went still immediately, relaxing his hand into that grip, letting his lips hang against Finn's. His surprise made him wary of leaning forward, and the leap of thrill and desire in his chest made him absolutely terrified of leaning back. When Finn drew away, Poe felt himself pursuing him before he could stop himself, just a couple centimeters - before he froze again, stricken by the look on Finn's face, which was ... regretful, somehow. "I'm sorry," Finn said, so low as to be almost inaudible.

"No," Poe breathed, and he was absolutely positive they could both hear his heart beating in his ears, double time. "No - Finn, what for?" He reached up to touch the side of Finn's face, and thought better of it, snatching his drug-covered hand back down to the ground. "Don't be."

"You looked sad." Finn set the knife down carefully, sticking the handle in the ground so the gel was well clear of the leaves. It would burn itself out in an hour or two. "You said - remember, you said it makes you feel like something right into your veins, right? Being so close to ..." To what, he left unsaid. Poe wasn't even sure himself, precisely, what he'd meant by it. Disaster. Death. The unknown. "Look, that's _you_. You were the first risk, the first real risk I ever took. I don't want you to be _safe_. You're not. You're about two seconds from breach all the damn time, that's what I like about you -"

"Just that, huh?" Poe managed, far less jauntily than he'd hoped; his smile was weak, half-stunned.

"Yeah. _Just_ that, Poe," Finn replied, finding his feet in their usual rhythm far more easily. "I mean, what else is there? You almost break my neck every time we break orbit, and you never stop _humming_."

"I'm humming for _you_ -"

"You're so not, though." Finn leaned in again - and this time Poe was ready, meeting him in one smooth, easy motion that made him feel at once more like himself, at once more like the universe had righted itself off its side. The kiss was soft, but it was sure, and the frantic beat of his heart smoothed out a little, driving forward instead of trying desperately to play catch-up. Finn's voice felt good against his mouth; he could feel it in his chest. "You're _so_ not."

"So stop me."

"What would that take, a fleet action?"

Poe laughed. The light of the stars was dim and hazy and entirely useless - but he was close enough now that he didn't need it, pressing his mouth in under Finn's jaw. "I think you can probably figure something out."

\- - -

The sun had almost set, again, when Finn first discerned the shape of their target through the trees. It wasn't particularly well-hidden, although the fact that it was very neglected gave it a certain grungy camouflage, overgrown with the ravenous vines that covered near everything here, and half shaded with the kind of weak, sun-seeking branches you didn't really want sagging over your landing pad, ideally speaking. Most of the smaller trees had been cleared away starting a couple hundred meters from the bunker itself, leaving only the larger, older specimens populating the space inside the bunker's perimeter - a perimeter they very nearly missed, thanks to the aggressively thick brush hiding the sensors wedged into the ground. On the sun-faded duracrete surface of the bunker, there was one rather ancient-looking Resh shuttle, the slopes of its stubby body marked with drifts of fallen leaves.

"Hey, baby," Poe said to their new ride, eyeing it from their position just beyond the perimeter. It felt a little stupid, actually, to be hidden here behind this moss-eaten fall of trees, taking every precaution not to trip the alarms that would announce their presence to what was by all appearances an abandoned base. He was on his knees, balancing his macrobinoculars in one of the gaps between the soft, wet branches; he looked up at Finn, who was standing with his hands on his hips and a less than encouraging look on his face. "Do you think there's even anyone here?"

"Oh, yeah," Finn said. "Haven't so much as seen the sun since _Starkiller_ , I bet. By the look of it."

"Seriously. If I were them, I'd have been out the door the second I heard that thing blew."

"No, you wouldn't." Finn held his hand out for the scopes; Poe handed them over. "Not if you were them." For a few seconds, he was silent, scanning. "They'll be on lockdown, waiting for the relocation teams. There's - I don't know, thousands of places like this. Who knows how long it'll be before their backup gets here to ferry all their payload to somewhere more useful. Could be months."

"So what you're saying is: they'll be happy to see us?"

"Happy to see some action, more like."

Poe grinned. "Happy to oblige."

"Even with a skeleton crew, it'll be - a place like this, thirty, forty guys. We're not just charging up to the door."

Generally, Poe's attempts at looking wounded fell well short of convincing; this one had a more genuine cast to it, a hitch in his ostentatiously affronted smile, the slightest pause before he pressed his hand to his breast. _You're not safe._ "And I would never suggest that."

"Uh huh."

"Hey." His smile was a little stiff as he craned his neck back to look up at Finn, whose face was still half-hidden behind those macrobinoculars. In the fading light, it was hard to make out the set of his mouth. "Finn."

Finn dropped down into a crouch beside him. "And I'd run after you, too." There was nothing weighty in his face - nothing but the simple truth, given as readily and as easily as if it had been the time of day. Poe _did_ feel dangerous, then; he felt as though he were holding something worth more than his own life, and felt how easy it would be to drop it. "Lucky for you," Finn continued, resting his hand on Poe's shoulder where it curved into his neck, "you don't have to. Because I have an _actual_ plan."

Poe leaned into his hand for a beat - two - three, counting the drum of his pulse against Finn's weight. It felt - steady. Balanced. _No,_ he thought. _No - you're not dropping_ shit. "All right," he said, feeling the corner of his mouth tug upward. "Let's hear it."

"Here." Finn handed him the macrobinoculars; Poe slid them again into the gap in their makeshift shield. "That tree, about twenty meters inside the perimeter, two o'clock. With the drooping branches."

"Oh, _that_ tree."

"You'll see it."

Poe was about to protest that no, in fact, he would not, because that description fit about ninety-three percent of everything in his field of vision - but then, he did see it. Incongruously rapid movement, in the otherwise sluggish doldrums of this hollow in the jungle - the broad, heavy leaves on those weeping branches fluttering incessantly downward, as though battered by rain or whipped by a sinking draft of wind. "Huh."

"Subterranean bunker," Finn pointed out.

"Air intake," Poe agreed.

"It'll be a hell of a lot easier to charge the door if there's no one inside," Finn said, digging into his pack. Poe glanced away from his magnified view to see him palming that tin of flammagel. "I think we should give them a reason to evacuate." He tossed it in the air; caught it again.

Poe looked at the tin in his hand - and back at the tree. He squinted. "Think you can hit it?"

"Please." Finn handed him his blaster rifle. "Can you?"

"From _twenty meters?_ Wow. That's confidence. No, it's all right, it's good to know what you really think of me, that's fine -"

They clambered to the top of their precarious (but, for now, holding) bulwark. Poe steadied his elbows in the soft, creaking wood; and as he stared down the barrel, he saw, in his peripheral vision, Finn bracing himself, winding up - and the tin went sailing, spinning through the air, its slight wobble intensifying with every passing second until Poe thought it might tumble too far off course, and he held his breath, following it with an even sweep of his rifle, waiting, waiting - and fired.

For a moment, everything was blinding, glittering blue. Poe felt Finn's hands grip his shoulders, heard (through the deep, powerful _thrum_ of heat rushing through the air) his _whoop_ beside his ear. The brief, dazzled blindness passed, and he looked up from the rifle's scope to see at least half of that hulking tree engulfed in rippling blue flame, a swamp of black smoke already pooling underneath in a disorienting reversal of the usual laws of physics. The air intake was sucking it diligently down below ground. He slung the rifle over his shoulder, steadying himself on Finn's arm and kissing him, his other hand sinking into a tangle of lichen for balance. "You're a damn genius."

"Remember to thank me later."

"Oh, I think we got a couple minutes." He was teasing, of course - of _course_ , although blazing fire, thick smoke, the muted sounds of screaming alarms echoing up from beneath their feet, and at least a fifty-fifty chance of a firefight in the next sixty seconds was really kind of doing it for him - and when Finn leapt back to the ground, he followed without complaint, seizing up his pack and pulling his rifle back up to ready. When Finn's hands sank into the front of his shirt and hauled him in again, barely half a second after he'd found his feet, he went right along with _that_ , too. "I'm not kidding," he panted against his mouth. "That brain of yours - I am _into_ it -"

Another _thrum_ ; another impact in his ears, air rushing to fill the void left by another sudden conflagration. "Uh," Finn said.

Poe twisted to stare over his shoulder. "... Right. All right. So the plan was a little too good, maybe."

"New plan: time to get to the ship." A proposition that was becoming more and more complicated, as the fire spread - and spread - through the brush with distressing speed.

"Copy."

And so they ran. Finn darted through the perimeter, head down, into the spectacularly blue-lit forest; and Poe followed, half a pace behind, all-out sprinting. His side cramped; his shoulder was sore; his lungs, moments later, began to burn from the fumes that _weren't_ going down to join their First Order friends; but the ache in his face, from the grin he just couldn't seem to chase, that persisted - that outlasted it all, from the first headlong leap into the blind woods, to following the sound of Finn's voice through the burning dark, to the shuttle's earnest, labored lurch toward hyperspace, and all the way home.


End file.
